


In The Land Of The Blind

by entanglednow



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Apocalypse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-18
Updated: 2011-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-19 16:31:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/202901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow





	In The Land Of The Blind

  
"John."

...

"John."

...

" _John._ "

John sighs and gives in, against his better judgment. He looks up, and glares at Sherlock over the top of his laptop.

Sherlock's sprawled on the sofa, half in and half out of his dressing gown. It's as if even getting that on straight had been too much trouble this morning. John's not quite sure what emotion he's going for over there, expression somewhere between irritation and wounded abandonment. The air of suffering is a little overdone though. John's seen how good he is when he actually _has_ to act. So he's going to assume it's just laziness.

"You realise, of course, that I'm not some sort of amusing performing dog, who does tricks to entertain you," John tells him.

Sherlock continues to stare, in a way that seems to be hoping John will be entertaining anyway.

"I'm not," John adds, voice just a little more fierce than before. Because this is a point he's going to be strict on. He's not here for Sherlock's amusement, no matter what Sherlock seems to think. He doesn't exist to pander to his whims.

"What are you doing?" Sherlock asks, though his tone already suggests that whatever it is, it can't possibly be interesting enough to distract him away from Sherlock's terrible boredom. John knows that Sherlock's own personal idea of what's important will forever remain tragically skewed from everyone else’s.

"I'm updating my blog." John can't help but wonder whether giving Sherlock more information is ever a good thing, when he's proven already that he's so very good at using it against you. The fact that he can't seem to help it somehow makes it even more irritating.

"Eurgh," Sherlock says theatrically, a word John knows comes in many flavours, all of them disapproving. Sherlock's arms are flung out either side of him, until one trails the back of the sofa and one rests on the floor. He's doing a fantastic impression of a man who can't think of anything more boring and unnecessary than that. Honestly, he's such a drama queen sometimes.

John relents, pushing the laptop back a little. "It's about you, I know you like it when it's about you, so don't even try to pretend that you don't."

Sherlock makes a huffy noise, but leans his head curiously over the arm of the sofa. "What are you saying about me?"

John shakes his head, because sometimes Sherlock Holmes is amusingly predictable.

"I'm writing about how you solved the Carver case with your Russian doll theory."

Sherlock pulls a face, as if there are already three things he disapproves of in that sentence.

"I told you not to call it that. Besides, you're probably explaining it wrong." Sherlock's pouting, which is not a good look for him. John's getting used to being accused of explaining things wrong. He's not sure he could ever actually manage to explain things in a way that would meet Sherlock's demanding standards.

"I'm quoting you actually," John says. Because that usually makes it better, or at least forces Sherlock to call himself an idiot as well.

"You leave out all the interesting parts, and you have a tendency to dwell unnecessarily on the emotional significance of things." Sherlock drawls out 'emotional significance,' like it's a disease.

"People appreciate emotional significance," John protests, hitting the space bar harder than he means to. "Normal people, normal, ordinary, everyday people. Though I know you disapprove of those. They find emotional significance to be an important point of interest in a story."

Sherlock's noise of disdain perfectly conveys his opinion, that normal people couldn't be trusted to know what the important parts of a story were.

"Is there post yet?" he asks, instead of replying.

John points. "It's on the table."

Sherlock makes a noise of vague, reluctant interest, but doesn't make any attempt to move. "Is it interesting?"

John frowns at his laptop screen, and types a little harder than necessary. "I don't know, I didn't look at it. It was all for you."

Sherlock holds a hand out. John's expression of irritation is completely wasted, because Sherlock isn't even bothering to look at him.

John shoves his chair back, and then leans sideways until he can grab the mail he'd left scattered this morning. He shuffles it into some sort of pile.

"I thought you didn't like mail. You called it slow and boring - apart from that time someone sent you human ears, no, that was like your _birthday._ You're really not supposed to get that excited when someone sends you human body parts through the post. It gives the wrong impression. It opens the door to more body parts in the future."

Sherlock waves a hand impatiently. John sighs and gets up; he takes the post, and his irritated scowl, over to the sofa. Two seconds before he's about to dump it in Sherlock's outstretched palm, Sherlock presses his hands together and sets them against his mouth.

"Open them, and tell me what they say."

"No," John says flatly. "I'm not your secretary, and I'm not going to die because someone's sent you anthrax through the post because you insulted them, or sent their brother to prison, or called them an imbecile." He tosses the whole lot on Sherlock's chest, where they land with a sad little 'flump' noise. Sherlock lets them slide down in a shower, until they rest in a fan from neck to groin. Then he sighs, like John has been disappointingly unhelpful.

John goes back to the computer and listens to the combination of tearing paper, louder sighs, and then lazily thrown, unopened envelopes, that hit various parts of the wall. He stares at what he'd been writing about the last case they'd helped with, and ignores Sherlock's immaturity. He'd been particularly pleased with his description of Sherlock's original theory for the last case. But now self-consciousness makes him backspace through it with a frown.

"What would you rather I called it then? The case, I mean."

There's a grunt, and a sheet of white paper goes sailing past him - John has just enough time to read _'yours sincerely, Dr. Arthur Ryan'_ before an envelope lands on top of it.

Sherlock grunts. "I don't care, call it whatever you want."

John can't quite tell whether that's honesty, petulance, or annoyance.

A screwed up ball of paper bounces off the back of his chair, and rolls away into the depths of the flat.

"Could you at least put them in the bin, if you don't want them."

"Bah!" Sherlock offers, which John translates, without too much effort, into 'the bin's too far away.' It's worrying that he can understand so many of Sherlock's noises. Because often there are whole sentences that mean nothing to him at all.

John shuts his laptop and swivels round in his chair, because he's clearly going to get nothing done while Sherlock's in need of an audience. He takes his mug to the sink, which thankfully is as empty as he'd left it the night before. Then he leaves Sherlock muttering to himself, surrounded by the many stripped carcasses of envelopes, while he goes to get ready for work.

Sherlock's still spread out there when he comes back, the papers a little more unsettled, like he'd briefly been a whirlwind of activity, and then decided it was just too much hard work.

"You know I promised I'd see Harry later," John reminds him, trying to pull the collar of his coat out from under his jumper.

Sherlock's only answer is a frown.

"So I'll be back late, possibly very late. No texting me because you can't find your socks, or you need someone to hold something for you. Or because you've gotten yourself kidnapped by fiendish criminals."

"I can only _hope_ something that interesting will happen to me today," Sherlock growls out.

"How did I know you were going to say that," John mutters under his breath, before giving his collar one last desperate yank, and leaving Sherlock to fend for himself for the day.

  
*****

  
When John gets back, all the lights are off. It's just gone ten and the whole flat is almost completely dark. There's just the faint glow from the streetlight coming in through the open curtains. He nearly trips over a pile of paper at the top of the stairs; they scatter in one long trail under the thump of his shoe. He rights himself with a hand on the wall, curse caught between his teeth.

"Christ, Sherlock, how many times have I told you -"

The room isn't empty. John can just make up the narrow outline of Sherlock, sitting in the farthest armchair.

"What are you doing sitting in the dark?" John asks. He's trying to stop asking obvious questions like that. But sometimes Sherlock is just _creepy_. It's best to get them over with, be called an idiot and move on.

Sherlock grunts something in answer that John doesn't catch.

"If you've blown all the fuses again -" John flicks the light, and the flat is abruptly filled with brightness that pinches at his eyes. "Alright, not that, then." He blinks over at the far wall, which is full of bare spaces, pieces of tape and the occasional strip of red or black where a pen missed paper. Sherlock has clearly started and finished (or abandoned) a project today, because it looks like he'd had a hundred or so pieces of paper taped to the wall. But now there's nothing there, nothing but holes in the wallpaper, and a fire full of smouldering ash.

"Mrs Hudson is going to be cross about the wallpaper," John says.

Sherlock's still frowning into the fire, hands held together, fingertips pressed against his mouth. Which is a little bit worrying.

"Everything alright?" John asks carefully.

Sherlock frowns and turns his head, as if just realising John might want an answer.

"I was thinking," he says. Which is one of the more obvious non-answers that Sherlock's given him.

"Deep thoughts, apparently."

"Very," Sherlock says, and his voice is a strange, hoarse sort of low. The sort that it usually only gets in the middle of the night, when he's been talking himself into exhaustion - arguing himself into exhaustion. John's fairly sure the only arguments he's ever lost are the ones he has against himself.

"The type that need to be thought in the dark?" John offers, and takes his coat off. The flat's warmer than it usually is. He imagines it's because of the sheer amount of paper-burning that had obviously been going in here.

"I hadn't realised it was dark," Sherlock says quietly. There's a stiffness to him, something that tells John this isn't just Sherlock being Sherlock. This is something else. John leaves his coat flung over the table. He drifts closer to Sherlock's chair, rests a hand on the back of it.

"Do you want some tea?"

Sherlock looks up at him fully, then. There's a frown on his face that looks like it's been there for a long time.

"I think I would most definitely like some tea, thank you."

"One of those vexing, complicated things I expect," John says cautiously. He's not really expecting Sherlock to explain. He almost never explains before he's got it all straight in his head, when he explains it at all. At the moment he looks like he's still thinking.

"Something very much like that, yes."

Whatever Sherlock had been working on, it had been fairly big. At least eight feet across, given the marks on the wallpaper.

"On second thoughts, Mrs Hudson will probably be fine," John says calmly. "She was only mildly cross about the bullet holes after all."

Sherlock looks up at the wall, quickly, as if for a second he forgets that he'd taken down whatever he'd had taped up there. Then he nods.

John goes to put the kettle on.

  
*****

  
Tuesday doesn't start off much better. John knows that Sherlock hasn't been to bed, because he's wearing the same clothes and his hair has that slightly demented look it gets when he's been dragging his hands through it. Then rolling it back and forth across the back of the armchair, like he might be able to convince his brain to work better through the wonders of static electricity.

It's not just that this morning though. There's a frustrated and angry - but directionless - _motion_ to him. There are cups strewn about the living room, some sort of ceramic invasion that occurred during the night. Some are cold and completely full. Some are tipped on their sides amongst the paperwork, leaving John to hope that they weren't _originally_ full. He nearly breaks his neck on his way from the stairs to the kettle on one. Sherlock himself is on the couch, surrounded by torn paper and strewn open books, spines broken, pages torn out and screwed up. John has to wonder, while he quietly makes toast and debates whether to actually say something, if this is the start of one of Sherlock's vicious downward spirals. The ones he'd mentioned before. Or maybe it's something worse, something dangerous, some disturbing and horrible case, that Sherlock wants to keep to himself. John can't help but worry that he'll go to work - only to come back and find a bullet-ridden corpse where his flatmate used to be.

The idea bites at him, while he quietly crunches his toast, watching the tense line of Sherlock's back, shoulder blades looking sharper than usual through the back of his shirt. He's still staring at the empty space on the wall, the marks left from the sellotape still obvious against the wallpaper.

Sherlock doesn't move at all until John puts his coat on, finds his keys. He rolls his head back to look at him, and John's oddly self-conscious because Sherlock has that way of judging you when you're least expecting it.

"I'll bring back Chinese," John tries.

"Fine," Sherlock says. John gets the impression that he could have said absolutely anything at all and gotten exactly that response.

  
*****

  
Things are no better, days later. It's only the fact that Sherlock's wearing a different shirt which stops John from seriously worrying. Though he's half-certain that Sherlock did it on purpose, because his eyes are still bruised, fingers restless. It's almost as if he's made the effort to stop John worrying, but nothing else. John's honestly not sure if that's a good sign or not.

It's not exactly easy to cheer Sherlock Holmes up. Though John can't help but try, over breakfast, because that seems to be the only time they run into each other in the light of day. He rustles the paper he's reading open wider.

"How about this then, 'man drowned in mysterious circumstances.'"

Sherlock's still staring at the wall, like he hasn't even heard. His feet are balanced on the terrifyingly unstable mountain of books and paper that the coffee table has become. John turns his head and rustles the paper a little more obviously. Hoping the lure of newsprint and gruesome death will tempt Sherlock out of his funk.

"You like that sort of thing," John presses, when the silence drags on. "Murder, mysterious circumstances, puzzles. I'm surprised you're not pestering Lestrade to look at all the dead bodies you've missed already."

Sherlock still stubbornly refuses to even make a dent in the conversation. John turns the paper around, so Sherlock can read the text. He's briefly encouraged when Sherlock snags the paper out of his fingers.

"It's not important." Sherlock screws up the whole paper, and then tosses it across the room.

"Not important," John says incredulously. He stares for a second at the crumpled remains of the paper, wondering whether to bother retrieving it and trying to flatten it out. Instead, he sighs and frowns a question at the other man. "Are you working on something? Is that what this is about? Do you have a case you haven't told me about, that you don't want me to know about?"

"I'm not working on anything," Sherlock says, too flatly and too fast.

John waits, but Sherlock doesn't offer anything else. He has no choice but to stumble on, helplessly. "I've never known you to be this quiet. It's not even like you're depressed. You're acting like something's broken and you're refusing to fix it."

Sherlock hums quiet agreement in his throat. It's reluctant and John doesn’t even think he means to give that much.

"Talking to you is like pulling teeth at the moment. But I feel like I should get points for trying, at least."

Sherlock glares at him from under an errant, and particularly ludicrous, curl of hair. John shakes his head and picks up the paper, intending to carry it to the bin. He's stopped by Sherlock's voice.

"What if your whole life was completely pointless? Everything you've ever done, everyone you'd ever met, every achievement you'd ever made, completely and utterly pointless. What would you do?"

John looks around, and finds that Sherlock has slipped down in the chair, chin pressed against his chest. He's wearing an expression that's almost impossible to define. John crumples the paper he's holding. He's oddly thrown by how carefully Sherlock offers the question. Not just curiosity, there's something else underneath the carefully bland question.

"Isn't that how everyone feels at some point?" John says after a pause. "Like nothing they've done is worthwhile, that it's all just not going to matter in the long run."

The noise Sherlock makes in his throat is irritated. "I don't mean philosophically, nothing so abstract and dreary. I mean _everything_ , a lifetime of work, of connections, of purpose - reduced to nothing. Everyone you've ever known, completely expendable. Things you've always taken as a universal constant - erased." Sherlock manages to sound petulant and disgusted at the same time, while making no sense at all.

John flounders for something helpful to say.

"You've done amazing things, and you're going to do amazing things -" John stops, because Sherlock shoves the whole pile of paper off the coffee table with his foot, shaking his head roughly, dismissively. John watches it fall, watches it all crash onto the floor, slithering across the carpet in a messy stream.

"No, I'm not," Sherlock says and he sounds half furious at the interruption. He presses his mouth shut, and pushes his fingers against it. John carefully moves one long foot aside and sits down on the table, listens to it creak under his weight. He's genuinely worried about the sharp crease in Sherlock's forehead. The one that's been there for days, never smoothing out, never quite sharpening into focus and curiosity. Like he's sitting on a problem he doesn't know how to solve. John's seen Sherlock frustrated, he's seen him angry, but never this, something that feels lost.

John wraps a hand round his ankle, for want of anything else to grab. "What's the matter, Sherlock, and don't tell me that nothing's wrong. You've been like this for more than a week now, and you keep putting me off. But I know it's _something_."

Sherlock remains stubbornly quiet.

"Look - just - I'm here if you want to tell me what's wrong, if you want to let me know. I could help. I could try and help, if you give me the chance."

"There's no point," Sherlock says flatly. "There's no point at all."

"Sherlock -"

Sherlock waves a frustrated hand. "Just go and do whatever it is that people do." Sherlock leaves the armchair and the living room in a rush of movement, like he's sick of the sight of them both. He slams the door of his room so hard that the hinges shake.

John exhales into the silence. "Yeah, that went fabulously well."

  
*****

  
The week is a busy one at the clinic, and John's lucky if he has enough enthusiasm to eat and find the kettle underneath Sherlock's collection of ever more bewildering books and science papers. He doesn't have the extra brain power to worry too much, though he feels slightly guilty about that. But Sherlock isn't actively trying to get himself killed. He just seems completely apathetic to everything.

John does wonder, when he spills rice all over something on black holes on Friday, whether a scientist has been murdered - something classified maybe. He knows that Sherlock's worked on classified cases before, cases he hasn't always told John about.

It's just odd to be left out of the loop when it feels _important._

He hates feeling useless.

  
*****

  
Nothing odd happens until Friday afternoon. John manages to get out of work an hour early, and finds Mycroft and Sherlock together. Sherlock is dressed, and looks as if he's at least made an effort to rejoin the world. John doesn't know whether Mycroft, of all people, is the one responsible for that. But he'll take miracles where he can get them. He hovers in the background, not entirely sure if he should say something, or even continue up the stairs. Especially since they seem to be staring at each other. Sherlock has one arm looped around his violin, lazy and careless, bow bending in a way that looks dangerous on the arm of the couch. Mycroft is leaning forward in his chair, like he's trying to convince Sherlock of something.

"I'd hate to part on bad terms, Sherlock," Mycroft says carefully and there's a vibration there, something almost human.

Sherlock stares at his brother for a long time over his violin. "We won't," he says finally, almost reluctantly.

John catches what looks like the beginning of surprise on Mycroft's face. But then it's gone, wiped away in an instant, like it was never there. Mycroft seems to have decided not to push his luck, rising from the chair in a way that shouldn't be possible given the sand-like properties of the cushions. He stretches a hand out to John, and John's shaking it before he's even realised that's an odd thing to do with someone you're used to finding in your armchair cushions. Not that Mycroft hasn't always been oddly formal.

"It's always good to see you, John," Mycroft says, and John has no idea how he manages to sound bland and genuine at the same time. He releases him, and then smiles, and it's oddly not quite the same as his usual bland, and terribly convenient smiles. It's slightly uneven; it's the sort of smile that a public figure would spend their entire life training themselves out of, because it's just crooked enough to be real. John watches him all the way down the stairs, feeling like he's missing something. Sherlock doesn't glare, or even offer an insult. He simply stares through the doorway until the front door shuts.

John's half way through making tea when he decides to mention the strangeness, because he still thinks that sometimes it's just him. Sherlock seems to make the world crazy by default.

"Was he weird today or was it me?" John asks, kettle still hovering over two mugs in some sort of indecisive confusion.

"You're always accusing him of being up to something," Sherlock points out, dragging his laptop back into his lap like it's a small child he intends to pet.

"Not to his face," John says. "And usually it's more of a Holmes sort of weirdness. Something Mycroft-ish. Today he seems weird in a general, people sort of way. It was very disturbing."

"A non-genetic, non-Holmesian sort of weird," Sherlock hums. "I'm not sure I'm qualified to investigate that."

It's the first almost-joke John's heard from him in days. Which has to be a good thing, doesn't it?

"Funny," John offers over his shoulder. "But seriously, we're not going to war, are we? Or being invaded by aliens? Nothing I should know about?" John really would like to be told if there's going to be an alien invasion. No one wants that sprung on them.

There's a long pause, where John's fairly sure Sherlock doesn't even take a breath.

"No, nothing you should know about," he says at last. Which is such an obvious lie that John's surprised Sherlock can bear it.

He stares at the kettle, and frowns until the sound of Sherlock typing starts up.

  
*****

  
Sherlock isn't exactly back to normal, but he's stopped being quite as odd as he was before. It's enough that John stops worrying, though he doesn't stop _wondering_. Because whatever it was that Sherlock was obsessing over, it's clear he's still working on it, mind turning it over and over. It's something he hasn't dropped, perhaps something he can't drop.

John's getting used to his silent, angry pacing, and his moments of obvious frustration. He's fairly sure that getting used to it isn't a good thing though. He worries about Sherlock, because he's not like other people. Sometimes he'd just like to know how he works, so he can help. John's always on firmer footing when he can help.

"I'm going out," Sherlock announces, just a little too loudly, and there's a strange sort of ceremony in the way he says it. As if it's a pronouncement to a group of people, a statement of intent. When there's no one in the flat but John.

John peers over the paper at him. "Did you want some company?"

"No," Sherlock says, it's quiet but firm. "No, you should stay here."

John doesn't have time to do much more than shoot him a quizzical look, before Sherlock's through the door, steps slow and strangely reluctant on the stairs. After the door thumps shut, John sits in the silence, frowning harder as the minutes tick by.

He looks across the flat, and finds that Sherlock's left the door of his room open. A slant of light from the window streams out of it, and invades the sitting room. John can just see the towers of paper and books, the clutter of science equipment, maps and even the dangling lead of a phone charger. He can see the end of Sherlock's bed.

There's a box balanced there, carefully left half open.

John very slowly puts the paper down on the arm of the chair. Because he's learnt well enough that Sherlock thinks through almost everything he does. There's a reason for everything. Today there's a reason for his door to be open. There's a reason for the box to be settled on the end of his bed, looking nothing like it ended up there naturally, and everything like it was placed there on purpose. Sherlock wants John in his room. He wants him in the box. No, this is something even clearer than that, this is a quiet sort of obvious. This is Sherlock desperately wanting John to find something out. Sherlock wants John to know something that Sherlock can't tell him, or won't tell him.

He goes to the box, prising up the cardboard flaps and opening it up. It's half full of paper and DVDs in sleeves. There's a Dictaphone, a couple of flash drives, and a bundle of half-burnt envelopes.

It takes John two hours to go through. His grasp of particle physics isn't exactly up-to-date, or in any way good enough to understand the graphs and charts. The carefully printed numbers that are ringed and notated in red pen mean nothing to him either. The letters are correspondence between Arthur Ryan and a Doctor John Tilden. Long streams of data, half sentences, gradually growing more and more frantic on Ryan's side while Doctor Tilden's replies become briefer - and quietly mocking.

The DVDs - the DVDs which John slips into his laptop and watches, are clearer. There's nothing especially strange about the nervous man facing the camera. He introduces himself as Dr. Arthur Ryan. He's middle-aged, with dark, untidy hair, wearing a shirt a few sizes too big. He speaks too quickly; excited, complicated sentences, something about invisible particles, experiments. John barely understands a word of it. There's a white board full of calculations. John watches two hours of footage, feeling confused when it cuts, skips ahead hours, or days. It's some sort of scientific video log then?

On the DVD marked 'STAGE 4,' Ryan's no longer smiling, there's a stark shaken-ness to him. Eyes dark, there's also a tremor in his voice that wasn't there before. He's explaining, too quickly - science too in-depth for John to understand - exactly what's happening on screen. Exactly what's happening inside the dull white cylindrical machine he's been performing tests in. It's a long, rambling explanation of wave collapse, the triggering of an 'event,' the odds of it being astronomically unlikely in every calculation.

Doctor Arthur Ryan is wearing the face of a man who's documenting something awful, and for all that he's trying to be as scientific as possible there's a quiet and hopeless horror in his expression. A quiet breathlessness to his words. Eventually, the man runs out of explanations. He stands silent in front of the whiteboard, under the headline 'TEMPORAL EFFECTS POST-EVENT.' The footage cuts to the machine, still and silent, then back to him. John thinks he can see Ryan's hands shaking. Though the camera must be mounted, it's as still and steady as a rock.

Ryan sketches out on the board, in hasty, broken black pen lines, the starting point of the singularity. He explains, voice cracking, in terms even John can understand. He explains exactly what's happening, explains the gravitational effects of the experiment on everything else. What will happen laid on the board in dark pen. He repeats, twice, three times - enough times that John loses count - that it can't be stopped.

"We'll start to feel the effects in twenty days." The hand holding the pen drops away from the white board, hits the calculations on the way down, pulling a stark, black line through them. "They'll be here soon, they'll run the same calculations, they'll come to the same conclusions. I don't even know why I'm making these tapes. There'll be no one left to watch them. There'll be no one to blame me." Ryan sits on a stool beside the work bench and breathes, awkward and slow. John thinks he's going to speak again, but the video file just ends, whatever happened afterwards cut away, or erased.

The only thing left is the Dictaphone that John set on the table. He listens to the quiet whirr of the tape rewinding and then hits 'play.'

 _"I know there's nothing I can say. There's no way I can make this right. I just wanted someone to understand."_

It's Ryan's voice, quiet and earnest. Speaking slowly but clearly into the microphone.

 _"I wanted someone to understand why I did it. Why I attempted it, what I was trying to do. The odds of something like this happening were so small - I did it because I could, to prove that I could do it when they said it couldn't be done."_

There's a pause, then the sound of heavy breathing, like someone trying to keep their emotions in check.

 _"I never intended our destruction. I never intended - there were safeguards, and the chances of anything catastrophic happening were astronomically small. I wouldn't have - I would have stopped if I'd known it would come to this."_

John thinks that's the voice of a voice of a man who knows that lying to himself is the only thing he has left.

 _"It was a one in a billion chance. I could have run the experiment a thousand times, a million and there would have been no event. There would have been no - God forgive me."_

John listens to the rush of quiet that comes after that. The unsettled hush of breathing, quick and shaky. There's a rattle underneath, that he can't quite make out. Science equipment maybe, pulled out of a drawer.

Until something clicks and John knows exactly what that sound is.

It's the sound of someone inexpertly handling a gun.

There's a dead pause, and John holds his breath.

The gunshot is louder than it has any right to be, sharp and tinny and wrong.

"Jesus," John manages.

The rush of silence stretches out. After a space of it, there starts up a quiet 'tap, tap, tap,' that John can't figure out.

Until he can.

He hits the stop button, which clicks in almost too gently. He sits curled over the box, hands drawn into fists, staring at the machine in his hand and shaking his head back and forth. This is insane, this is completely and totally insane. The idea that anyone - that it would even be possible to do that much, to cause that much damage. To end the whole damn - John's shaking and he doesn't know why - fuck it, he does, he does know why. He's shaking because he believes it. He believes it enough to feel sick. Because nothing Sherlock's done makes sense unless Sherlock believes it's true.

If _Sherlock_ believes it's true....

It's too much to process, too much to take in. John's sweating, pulse too fast, body insistent that he _do_ something. Though exactly what he's supposed to do, he doesn't have the faintest idea.

He rewinds the tape back to the beginning. He isn't even sure why, he just does. He doesn’t want to listen to it again, not that. He wants to pack it away and forget he ever heard it, to forget it ever exists, but he can't. He leaves the box on the table, contents spilling out either side. He doesn't bother to pack away the files, the discs, or the tapes. Sherlock obviously wanted him to find it, he obviously wanted him to see it all. There's no way Sherlock will miss it, when he gets back. And John intends to ask why exactly he didn't tell him any of this. Why he hasn't told anyone any of this. Why no one knows this.

John's briefly furious, that he had to find out about this at all, that he knows now. This morning he was trying to decide if he should buy a new jacket, and feeling guilty for not phoning his sister often enough and now.... He doesn’t even know now, what does anything matter any more? But that's the point, isn't it. That's why governments don't tell anyone. Because who wants to see what the world turns into when you tell it that nothing matters any more, nothing you do, nothing you say. What the hell would anyone do if they discovered the world's future could be measured in days? What would _everyone_ do. What are you supposed to do when there's just no time left?

John knows people well enough to know it would be a nightmare.

  
*****

  
Sherlock stays gone for almost the entire afternoon.

John drinks far too much coffee, and can't quite think about anything for longer than five minutes at a time. He can't quite wrap his head around the idea of the end of everything, the entire span of human history, coming to an abrupt and pointless end.

He leaves the box on Sherlock's bed, contents replaced haphazardly, papers curling over the cardboard flaps. He can't decide if setting the whole thing on fire would be the right, or the wrong, thing to do. Or whether it would even make him feel better. Maybe it's just the adult equivalent of putting your head under a blanket and pretending the world doesn't exist. The sort of thing you should have grown out of. John spends a long stretch of time certain that he doesn't give a shit.

It's dark when he eventually hears the sound of a door opening, and then the soft press of shoes on the stairs. John had thought it'd been long enough for all the adrenaline to pour out of him, or that he'd at least drowned it all in caffeine, limbs still where he's been sat unmoving on the armchair for hours. But suddenly it's back, all at once, and he feels like he might actually explode.

Sherlock looks far too tall in the darkness, when he eventually reaches the room. He lifts a hand and flicks the light on. John squints, and blinks until he can see. In less than a second Sherlock's taken in the opened box, the way John's sitting, and it's like he accepts it all. He tosses his gloves on the table, and then waits. John realises, immediately, that for once Sherlock is waiting for him, that he's not going to speak until John does. John takes a breath, and finds no moisture in his mouth at all. He swallows roughly, twice, three times.

"I really want you to tell me that it's all a joke, or that you're testing me, something like that. Some sort of psychological experiment to see how I'll react to stress. Because that's exactly the sort of thing you'd do, without taking into account that it would be in horrendously bad taste, or that it might completely destroy someone's world view. Something like that."

Sherlock sighs, so deeply John can see it from ten feet away, but he doesn't say a word.

"Tell me it's something like that," John says - or maybe pleads. He doesn't even know.

Sherlock doesn't say anything at all, and John wonders if he even has the energy to keep pretending. Or whether he's going to break into some sort of hysterical laughter, and never stop. He's a line of tension, completely silent and that's so strange, and so not like him, that somehow John's left feeling like there's no solid ground any more.

"One man can't do this much damage," John says - he _insists_. "It's unthinkable. This is ridiculous, Sherlock."

Sherlock shakes his head, and turns around, as if he's going to walk away. John reaches a hand out, and snatches at his coat. He physically hauls him to a stop. He watches his narrow frame jolt and then stiffen, and finally turn under the insistence of his fingers.

"What do you want me to say?" Sherlock bites out. "Please, try and have an opinion I haven't considered in the past two weeks. One that I haven't gone over, and over."

John's still struggling for an opinion if he's honest. Something to say, some angry protest about how he could have been left out of this, left floundering while something this fucking big was happening in the background.

"Why didn't you tell me - no, why did you tell me? Why now?" John tightens his fingers and tugs, Sherlock doesn't even resist, doesn't pull away. He lets John have his moment of angry, aggressive confusion, coat crumpling under the twist of his fingers, in a way which probably isn't good for the material at all.

"You had a right to know."

"And I didn't have a right to know when you discovered it?"

John lets him go, and Sherlock uses the pause to take off his coat and throw it over the back of the chair, scarf still curled round his neck. It looks out of place under the sharp tilt of his jaw.

"He invited me to witness him turn the machine on," Sherlock says quietly. "A witness to his experiment. He invited several people, apparently, most of them people in his field. None of them believed he could accomplish what he was trying to do. None of them showed up. I threw the letter in the bin." Sherlock's fingers curl where they're hanging loose at his sides.

"You hardly ever read your mail," John says tightly. "Don't even pretend this could in any way be your fault. Even if you'd gone, the last I checked you don't know anything about particle physics. What exactly were you supposed to do, go with your gut? Questioned the design of his...whatever the hell it was."

"The man just wanted to impress someone," Sherlock says.

"So arrogance is dangerous, you and I both know that's dangerous. It's stupid to be surprised. I'm more interested in why you thought you had to sit on this whole thing by yourself."

"I wasn't sitting on it," Sherlock snaps. "If you can, for one moment imagine going over the evidence and finding no possible conclusion, other than it being completely genuine. Of doing nothing but finding further evidence that corroborated Ryan's insistence that he had set an experiment in motion which couldn't be stopped, that it would, in fact, be the end of everything."

"And you didn't try, you didn't find a scientist -"

John watches Sherlock's jaw flex.

"Who am I talking to, of course you did. You did everything you could, didn't you? I bet you even asked Mycroft for help. Because this isn't about you and him, or some random murder in the street. This isn't a puzzle - this is a fucking countdown." John sighs. "I can't believe we're arguing about this." His voice sounds strangely thin. "I can't believe I discovered the world is ending and we're arguing about it."

He sighs and leans forward onto his knees.

"Why are we arguing about this? I've spent all afternoon in that box, and I can't shake it out of my head. I don't think it's the sort of thing you're _supposed_ to shake out of your head, and I just need to. I feel kind of sick, and awful, and I need to go and shower at least, before it sticks to me, ok?"

Sherlock looks like he's about to say something. But then he shuts his mouth and nods.

John pushes himself out of the chair, stiff and awful and just a little nauseous, still. He tromps his way upstairs, turning the lights on as he passes them. He leaves his clothes on the bathroom floor, and has the shower so hot he feels light-headed when he finally steps out into the chill of the bathroom, walls and mirror fogged with condensation.

He doesn't even know if it has helped or not. But if he'd been looking to burn the whole afternoon away he's probably failed.

When John comes back down Sherlock's still staring at the wall.

John doesn't know what else to do. So he makes them both a cup of tea. Then he carries them over, lays a hand on Sherlock's shoulder, until long fingers lift and wrap round the second mug. Sherlock turns his head, peers up at him curiously, as if he's not quite sure why John's still here.

"Where else am I supposed to be?" John pushes his wet hair into some sort of order, and takes his own mug of tea to the other chair, stares at Sherlock's bright look of accusation. "Mycroft knows, doesn't he? That's what all that was about the other day."

"Mycroft has a disturbing ability to know things the moment they become important."

"The end of the world is important, I suppose," John agrees, over the burn of his mug. He stares at the steam for a minute, before something else occurs to him. "I'm hungry." He looks at Sherlock, who has an eyebrow raised half way up his forehead. "Are you hungry?"

Sherlock shakes his head.

John's never really considered what would be his 'I've just discovered the world is coming to an end,' food of choice. It turns out to be cheese on toast.

Sherlock stays quiet, while John watches cheese bubble.

"You can talk if you want, you know. I'm fairly sure that there is officially no _worse,_ here. And nothing you say right now is going to offend me."

"It might," Sherlock says quietly, and John knows that if he looks around he'll find Sherlock with his chin resting on his fingers.

"Well then, I forgive you for being an arse," he says.

Sherlock still doesn't speak though.

"Mycroft will have people working on it I suppose," John offers over his shoulder.

"I would imagine the greatest minds in the world are straining the definition of the term 'desperate measures' by now. But when the only thing they can seem to agree on is how very _fucked_ we all are, things would seem to be fairly conclusive."

John decides the toast will do as it is, or all the cheese will have melted its way off the toast and made a mess. He pulls it onto a plate, and takes it to the other chair.

"Didn't you insist that you're one of the greatest minds in the world?"

"Particle physics, John, not the sort of thing you can study as a hobby."

John takes a minute to burn his mouth with hot cheese. "But you're good at putting things together."

Sherlock reaches over and steals a piece of his toast, then starts eating it like he has every right to it.

"I'm not sure whether to be flattered you have so much faith in me, or worried that you've become dangerously delusional," Sherlock says with his mouth full.

"I would imagine now would be the perfect time to start living in a world of delusion."

Sherlock shakes his head. "There's a difference between disbelief and delusion."

"And I'm not going to indulge in either of them," John says flatly. "What's the point?"

"I think a lot of people would choose the option, over the truth."

John pushes the cheese back onto the last piece of toast. "I don't think you'd ever choose any option but the truth. So I suppose I'll have to amble along after you, so you don't get into some sort of trouble."

"I'm not sure even I could find worse trouble than we're all already in."

John nods. "I'm going to remind you that you said that, at some point in the future, I'm sure of it." He doesn't say anything about how much future there actually is, how little it matters.

There's a pause that's full of all the things he wants to say, but can't - or can't work out how.

"How long?" John asks at last.

Sherlock stares at the piece of toast he's holding. "Ryan had a mathematical formula up for the collapse of the wave form."

John had read through all the information, watched the films explain wave forms and stability and protons. He hadn't understood a word of it until the phrase _'probability of singularity: 0.004%.'_ Dr. Ryan had done the calculation nearly a hundred times, scribbled over the careful text already recorded in a journal, trying desperately to prove himself wrong. Or to prove science wrong.

"Thursday, 4:17pm." Sherlock says carefully.

John glances at the calendar, though he knows precisely what day it is. They're not even going to make it to the weekend, then.

He doesn't ask Sherlock if he's sure.

Monday's gone before it really sinks in, the end of the day and the night wasted to sleep and silence.

He's not sure how he manages to sleep at all.

  
******

  
John fully intends to get up early on Tuesday, to really make it count. Instead he wakes up at half past eight, because there's a dog barking somewhere outside, and someone's burning toast. He forgets, for a good minute and a half, that it isn't just another morning like any other. He completely forgets the world's going to end. It takes him another few minutes after that to believe it. He should call Harry, though he's not quite sure what he's supposed to say. He doesn't know how to avoid arguments that don't even matter, how to sum up everything in a few words without sounding like an escaped mental patient. Or someone who's planning to commit suicide.

So instead he gets dressed, and then goes to see if Sherlock's toast is actually edible. He makes it through half a slice, and most of a cup of tea without enough milk in it, and he's still not sure whether it is.

"This isn't like you?"

"What isn't?" Sherlock gives John a curious look from over a pile of papers.

"Breakfast." John gestures with the toast that's still threatening to crumble into black dust. "And what are you doing, why are you still _working_. You said there wasn't a way to fix it."

"There isn't." Sherlock tosses another paper across the living room, pages fluttering apart in slow motion.

"Then why are you still - could you stop, please. Have some burnt toast."

Sherlock raises an eyebrow.

"It really is very burnt," John accuses.

"Then why are you eating it?"

"You made me breakfast," John says slowly. Though he isn't quite sure whether the miracle of that actually gets through.

Sherlock sighs, relents, and sits on the arm of the chair.

John looks up at him. "Isn't there anything you've thought about doing, anything you want to do?” he asks. “The world isn't just ending for me, after all," and there isn't anything _tense_ about the question, though he worries that there is, checks it twice.

Sherlock tosses him a sharp look, something that's layered with judgement and focus. Sometimes John wishes Sherlock would just look at him like a normal person. But then, he wouldn't be Sherlock if he did.

"You could probably solve a case," John adds. "Before the world ends. No one would have to know. You wouldn't have to explain to anyone. You could just pick a case, any case and..."

"Go out with a bang?" Sherlock says slowly.

John swallows, and feels the weight of his mug in a way he hadn't really been concentrating on before.

"Something like that."

John lets the mug revolve between his fingers, without really thinking about it at all. "I'm just saying, if you wanted to, you could."

"No, there's nothing I want to do," Sherlock says quietly.

John's oddly upset about that, and he has no idea why. Maybe it's because he's struck, suddenly, by the realisation that this is Sherlock. Fascinating and clever and _brilliant_ and in two days he'll be gone. He'll be gone and there'll be no one around to know, or care that he was even here. Sherlock will cease to exist, to matter at all, and it's so fucking intolerable that John can hardly breathe. Because it's not fair, none of it's fair. How could the universe set all this up and then just let them fuck it all up. How could it have let them be so stupid?

"I suppose it's hard to solve the little puzzle, when there's a vast and impossible leviathan hanging over your head, an unsolvable one at that."

"Nothing's unsolvable," Sherlock grinds out, though it's more a petulant denial than a truth.

"It's out of your area. I think the world can forgive you for not solving this one, Sherlock."

John's fairly sure the words sink in, but Sherlock's still stiff with irritated failure. John lets his cup slide between the cushions and leans over. He intends to - he doesn't even know - pat Sherlock on the shoulder, or offer some sort of weird one-armed hug. Spontaneous physical affection isn't really his thing, but it's amazing how the end of the world can make you want to make the effort.

He ends up with one hand braced on the arm of the chair the other half draped over Sherlock's shoulder, and Sherlock turns his head just far enough to ask a question with the tilt of his mouth. John has no idea why he does it. Perhaps it's Sherlock's ability to always be somewhere far ahead of him. Or maybe John thinks 'why not' and it's too quick and too strange to stop. He's twisting a little further and he's kissing Sherlock before he even realises it. Pressed into his mouth where it's tilted down and open just a fraction. He crushes a noise, and there's a moment where there's nothing but the rush of breath across his cheek and pressure and quiet and something a little bit like shock that he'd even dared to do something so insane. Because it really is _genuinely insane_.

All he has to do is think it before he's pulling away.

"Fuck - I shouldn't have done that, I'm sorry, I don't even know why I did. I know you don't -" John digs his teeth into his lip and shakes his head.

Sherlock looks genuinely curious, and he definitely notices when John forces himself to stop looking at his mouth.

"That I don't what?" Sherlock asks, completely unconcerned, as if John kisses him all the time.

John clears his throat, and wonders if he can get away with putting his hands in his pockets and pretending none of this is happening. Distancing gestures, a whole riot of awkward body language which Sherlock could read with his eyes closed. Though he's not sure it really bothers him. It's nice to know _someone_ has a clue what he's doing. Even if he wishes Sherlock would spend more time pretending that he didn't.

"Do relationships, with people and our small brains." John tries for a laugh, even though his mouth still tingles faintly. He doesn't know where the word 'relationships' came from. That wasn't what he meant at all. That wasn't what he meant to mean. The impending end of the world seems to have broken him.

"You think I'd do a relationship with someone who thought like me." Sherlock's face twists at the idea of it. "God, they'd be insufferable. Completely insufferable. We'd kill each other within a week."

His voice is so genuinely horrified that John's startled into laughter.

"No," Sherlock says over the tail end of it. "It would have been someone like you. Just smart enough not to be irritating, willing to make a stab at brilliance at least, for all that you'd be floundering rather far from shore. Smart enough to be brave, but not brave enough to be _stupid_."

John can't help the noise he makes through his nose, amusement and disbelief and something weirdly like affection.

"That was almost romantic."

Sherlock grunts. "Funny, I assumed you'd think it was an insult."

John nods. "I think I'm learning."

"What, how my brain works?" Sherlock has one eyebrow raised, dubious, amused.

"Oh, I don't think I'd go quite that far," John says. "I pity anyone who discovers how your brain works. Something horrible would probably immediately happen to them. Something Lovecraftian."

"Are you comparing the inner workings of my brain to unknowable eldritch horrors?"

John's nodding, before he decides if he should or not. "I think it's only fair."

"I'm not sure whether to be insulted or flattered."

"You could be both," John assures him. He notices how far they've come from the original conversation, drifting slowly but noticeably away from John's ridiculous attempt at...he doesn't even know. He flatly refuses to use the word 'intimacy' because it doesn't fit. It's too simple, too easy, and much too soft. It's nothing like the almost too-sharp weight of his confused feelings for Sherlock. So, no, he doesn't object at all when Sherlock doesn't push, when he doesn't pick at the strange direction. Instead he leans against the back of the chair and regards John with something that wants to be amusement, but isn't quite. There's still something a little too serious at his jaw line, something that makes the pale of his skin _hard_.

"It's the last night you'll ever get, John. You could do anything. The laws of society no longer apply."

John throws him a look, which he hopes conveys a little of what he thinks about that. "I think they still do."

"How unadventurous of you," Sherlock decides. But he doesn't protest otherwise. Funny, John rather expected him to.

"I'm not half as adventurous as people think I am." John shakes his head, and maybe there's a little irritation there, but if he'd known he wouldn't have made it to forty he might at least have tried to be a little more - no, no he probably wouldn't. That's quite depressing.

"That's an utter lie," Sherlock says, and this time he does sound amused. John can hear the smile in it. "You're the _best_ sort of adventurous."

"When you say adventurous, I don't think you mean what everyone else would mean." John makes it sound more like a joke than an accusation, but Sherlock sniffs, like he hears the underlying intent.

"Everyone else is wrong," Sherlock says simply.

John laughs. "This is why people think you're arrogant, you do realise that?"

"Yes," Sherlock agrees. "You can kiss me again if you like."

John's so surprised that he finds himself shaking his head before he can form a thought.

" _Sherlock._ "

Sherlock's hiding a smile now, and not very well. He's finding this amusing. John should probably be offended.

"What? It was a suggestion."

"I'm not going to kiss you if you don't want me to," John says stiffly, and he's aware he's making it sound like Sherlock's accused him of taking advantage, even though he'd done no such thing. He's also making it sound like he'd quite like to kiss him again. Which is...something he's only just figured out. That seems unfair, even for him.

Sherlock steeples his fingers, which shouldn't be alluring, but sort of is. "I never said that."

"You gave the impression that you had no strong feeling either way," John admits. "I've always assumed you didn't...that you just _didn't_."

"I could fake enthusiasm," Sherlock offers.

"No," John says stiffly. Because the idea of it is upsetting in a way he's not expecting at all.

"That was the wrong thing to say," Sherlock says quietly.

"Yes," John agrees.

"Tell me why," Sherlock adds, before John can decide if he has a right to be so annoyed about it.

John exhales - still can't quite look at him. He realises that he's going to say it out loud, and he doesn't quite care. "Because I want to kiss you, not whoever you'd be if you were faking it."

Sherlock doesn't say anything for long enough that John cautiously turns his head to look at him, and finds him much closer than he expects.

"Sherlock -"

"Shut up," Sherlock says simply, and then kisses him.

There's an element of experimentation about it. Though John's not sure Sherlock can do anything without it feeling, in some way, like an experiment, like he's being weighed, measured, and judged. There's something frustrating about that, but John's too caught up in what it feels like to object, fingers dug into the arm of the chair, and the thick fabric of his own jeans. Sherlock's hand dares to be more forward, fingers only barely warm on the side of his neck, like he knows where he's supposed to touch, but isn't willing to grasp, to hold. Or maybe it's just that John hasn't given him permission, doesn't think he has. Not that Sherlock has ever needed his permission - not that Sherlock has ever _asked_ for his permission before.

The experimental edge has become something untidy. It's a much longer kiss than John dared, and he really doesn't want it to stop. It's slightly unnerving that this isn't more strange, more unexpected. Sherlock looks at him from barely an inch away, forehead creased like he's compiling data.

"I think I could have learned to quite like it," Sherlock says at last.

John shuts his eyes. "I hate you," he says quietly. Because he was thinking exactly the same thing.

He half expects Sherlock to huffily ask him why, but he stays quiet. Exercising his ability to be perceptive for once. Or maybe he's just getting better at knowing when not to talk. At learning there are times when not talking can actually be helpful.

"You probably never even thought about it." It's not a question. John's mostly talking out loud. There's not really any reason not to any more.

The noise Sherlock makes, it's low and familiar. It's the one he uses when he's amused by people being wrong. John turns around and looks at him, and this time there is a question there, somewhere, even if he doesn't mean there to be.

"We could have had a messy and very confusing relationship," Sherlock says, blinking slowly like he hasn't just suggested something insane.

John exhales, and very carefully doesn't think about exactly what that would have been like.

"You would have hated it," he says at last.

"I wouldn't have hated all of it," Sherlock counters.

John stares at the ceiling, and wonders how the world managed to make the last few days of his life so incredibly strange.

"I might have put up with the parts I hated," Sherlock says quietly.

  
*****

  
John lies in bed for a long time. He can feel the hours he has left dripping away.

Wasting away.

That more than anything else forces him up out of bed, makes him stumble his way downstairs to where Sherlock is already a narrow line of motion. The far wall is a mess. There's the stark headline, 'TEMPORAL EFFECTS POST-EVENT' and then tacked underneath it, equations and printouts, pictures of the human brain. John can see a post-it note with the phrase 'end/perception impossible' on it, scribbled out in a firm hand, over and over.

John doesn't say a word, he just takes his coffee over to the wall and stares at it, at the collage of science and horror that Sherlock has made.

"There isn't enough time," Sherlock says stiffly from behind him. John can hear his bare feet moving back and forth in the paper on the floor. "I don't understand, and there isn't enough time. I can't get it." There's a thump, which sounds a lot like Sherlock's fist against the arm of the chair. "There isn't enough _time._ "

John breathes in the steam from his coffee, and stares at a picture of a metronome, caught mid-swing. "What are you hoping to do here?"

"I don't know." It sounds half angry, and half lost. "But there has to be something. I refuse to just - I _refuse_. It's ludicrous, the idea that we can just be swept away by one moment of arrogance. By one improbable roll of the dice."

Sherlock holds a hand out.

"Four billion universes we go on as normal, never having the slightest clue what could have gone wrong. One universe we snag on a thread and the world -" he jerks a hand sharply, viciously upwards. "The whole world unravels."

"I wonder if it will be like that?" John says. "Like we're unravelling."

Sherlock looks at him, like he's debating whether that was a rhetorical question. He must eventually decide not.

"I'd imagine the gravitational forces will rip us apart first."

John doesn't want to think about gravitational forces, or how exactly they're all going to die. He's tired, and he just wants to sleep, which feels like the stupidest irony of all. A horrific and terrible waste of time that he doesn't have. He suspects there's a great deal of denial still at work there.

"I'll stay with you, if you want."

He expects Sherlock to protest, to tell him he thinks better on his own. That John can't do any good, that he looks dead on his feet.

"Yes," Sherlock says instead. Which is honest, and quiet, and something gnaws in John's gut that wasn't there before.

  
******

  
John falls asleep on the couch at about four in the morning, and the next thing he knows it's Wednesday. Which seems inordinately cruel.

Sherlock's pacing, wearing new trousers and a half-unbuttoned shirt, so pale it looks like snow. The collage on the wall has different pictures today, or the same pictures in a different configuration. John can't tell for sure. No - the picture with the metronome has been replaced by what looks like a giant megaphone.

Sherlock's putting things into categories, 'perception,' 'memory,' and 'temporal effects.' By the look of it, he's been doing it for a while.

"What are you doing?"

"There's a theory..." Sherlock offers over a book. He has it opened so wide the spine has cracked all the way along. "Several theories. No way to test them, no way to test any of them. Working on the assumption that one of them is right. There's an irritating amount of uncertainty in scientific theories, it's infuriating -"

John tries to translate that into something that makes sense in his head. "You think you can stop it happening?"

"No, it'll happen," Sherlock says firmly.

Which makes no sense at all.

John sort of wants cold Chinese for breakfast. Which seems like a fair enough request the day before the world ends.

"There's cold Chinese in the fridge, isn't there?"

"No," Sherlock says, tossing the book he's holding aside, and then dragging the next one off the pile. "Not any more."

John frowns. "When did you eat it?"

"A couple of hours ago."

John shakes his head and struggles his way upright. He figures he can raid the kitchen after he's showered. He's going to shower on his last day on earth. The world may be ending but he's still civilised.

By the time he gets upstairs he's changed his mind. He spends an hour and a half in the bath instead, because why shouldn't he? He stares out of the window afterwards, at the people walking by. No panicking, no looting, no civil disorder. People are just being _people_. John's not sure how to feel about that. He's strangely numb.

When he gets downstairs he finds Sherlock still working. He's crouched by the wall, long fingers pressing down against paper, glossy photographs and smudged photocopies.

"Temporal effects," Sherlock mutters, there's a deep gouge in the collage John hadn't noticed before, that Sherlock won't stop poking. As if it's an irritation that still bothers him. A loose tooth in the world.

Sherlock spends the last day staring at the wall, like he can stop this whole thing with the power of his huge brain.

John sits on the bed with his phone for two hours, while the sun goes down. He can't decide if he's working up the courage to call someone, or wondering if it's worth it. He leaves it, goes back downstairs and drags Sherlock away from his work long enough to argue over a packet of sugar, and drink tea that's far too strong. Sherlock lingers afterwards, watching John through half-closed eyes with a strange sort of purpose. Like he'd forgotten something he was supposed to be doing.

"You can stop you know," John says. "You can just stop."

Sherlock laughs into his mug, the echo strangely wet. It doesn't take him long before he's back by the wall, working, muttering under his breath in long, vicious sentences, remembering.

The last day drags on, quiet and strange.

John hasn't felt so alone for a long time.

  
*****

  
He's in bed by midnight, staring at the ceiling, trying not to think about anything. He's doing a pretty good job of it. Until Sherlock appears in his bedroom doorway, holding a book, with half a dozen pieces of paper slid into it as bookmarks.

John blinks at him, the light from the landing streaming into his eyes.

Sherlock pushes the door shut with a hip, and then tosses the book on the bed.

John can't quite manage more than a gaping sort of surprise, when Sherlock strips to his boxer shorts and slides in beside him.

"Oh don't look so surprised," Sherlock says, voice an irritated drawl. His skin is cold, where it touches the warmth of John's arm.

John tries to put his words in order, he's having terrible trouble with Sherlock sprawled against his side, like it's something they just _do_.

"I thought it was a thing - you know, not a misunderstanding, but just a crazy thing, something we weren't going to talk about. I didn't expect us to end up -" John tries not to think about how much he wants to end up here, end of the world be damned. He thinks it's a little sliver of madness. A mid-life crisis - or just the view from the edge. Or maybe they're all just excuses.

"It wasn't a thing," Sherlock says, wrecking John's paper-thin wall of denial. "The way you look at me is very distracting, you realise that. And I haven't been ignoring you, I've just been -"

"Working."

"Yes." Sherlock's hands are cold. He seems to want to put them on John anyway. John can't quite work out how he's supposed to mind. But it's all so strange. He doesn't want to stop him. He thinks this moment of madness is exactly what he wants. His body is a traitor.

Sherlock makes a short, meaningless noise at whatever shows in his face. Then he leans in and kisses him and John forgets what he was protesting, and why he was annoyed. It's amazing, what three days and the end of the world can do to someone. Or maybe it wasn't that at all. Maybe this is something that's just always been there. John's surprised by how little that bothers him.

Sherlock's not aggressive, he's curious, clinical, occasionally irritable, moving John's hands when they get too adventurous.

"This is supposed to be a mutual sort of thing, you know," John tells him.

Sherlock makes a dismissive noise, and pushes him into the sheets. He seems to be firm in his belief that he can silence John with enthusiasm, if nothing else. John's not sure if he's just an experiment, not that he wouldn't be weirdly flattered to be an experiment. It's just...he's never been very good at this, and he's fairly sure Sherlock doesn't do this at all. Whether through choice or design, he's not sure it matters. John doesn't know how they got here. But he can't quite stop making himself want it anyway.

"I don't expect anything," John says quietly. "Just because I said things the other day."

"Quiet," Sherlock says, as if John's ruining his concentration.

Sherlock's hand slides into his boxer shorts anyway, and John thinks he should be embarrassed about how hard he is, about how he pushes almost instantly, reflexively, into the curl of Sherlock's fingers. He hisses out a breath, which sounds like an apology, and Sherlock calls him an idiot against his mouth. Which is the most ridiculously touching endearment he thinks he's ever heard.

It's all so quiet, pressed together under the sheets, in a way that's almost claustrophobic with no words at all. But Sherlock is long and warm and _everywhere_ , and John can't help how tightly he holds on. While Sherlock takes him apart, like he's always, _always_ known how.

Afterwards Sherlock fidgets, like he wants a cigarette, even though he didn't actually get off. John watches him lazily, from the other side of the bed, all messy curls of hair and strangely vulnerable jaw line. John thinks he falls asleep, because when he opens his eyes again Sherlock is closer, and his eyes are sharp in the dark.

"What's the time?"

"Just after three," Sherlock says, without looking away from him.

"Stop staring at me in the dark, it's creepy."

"There's something I have to remember," Sherlock says quietly, words a rush against the curve of his cheek.

"You always remember when you need to," John mumbles into the pillow.

Sherlock's fingers press tight into his skin. He thinks the other man's talking again. But John's too tired to understand what he's saying.

  
******

  
"Has the world ended yet?" John murmurs from underneath his own arm.

"No," Sherlock tells him from somewhere to his left. "And you stole all the quilt. If I'd known my last night on earth would be a war of attrition, I would have been less enthusiastic about it."

"You kick," John offers. "Like a horse."

"I've never shared a bed before," Sherlock says, like that excuses him. It probably does. It's the last day that mankind is ever going to have. John supposes he can be generous. Sherlock rarely deserves it, but he can't quite stop giving it anyway.

John doesn't want to sleep, there's not enough time until - there's not enough time. He must manage it, somehow, because suddenly he's staring at the wall, and it's lighter than it was before. He's almost angry about it, about how he could possibly sleep.

He can feel the slow drift of Sherlock's knuckles, and the press of a phone, against his back. He can't help but wonder what Sherlock could possibly have to do, on the very last day. He's going to say something, but instead he finds himself staring at the stack of books he's been reading in a slant of sunlight.

"I have library books that are due back the day after tomorrow." John's not quite sure how, or why he manages to sound so worried about that.

Sherlock makes a noise against his back, and for a second John has no idea what it is - until it becomes more obviously stifled laughter.

It quickly becomes not even the slightest bit stifled, Sherlock starts laughing, and he doesn't stop.

-

John wonders if he'll even notice when the world ends. Or whether it will be so quick he won't have time to. Whether humanity will quietly swirl out of existence, like water down a drain.

It's not quiet at all. It's completely and utterly terrifying.

A poet would probably say something trite.

Compare the sensation to being born.

It isn't like that at all.

....

...

..

.

"John."

...

"John."

...

" _John._ "

John sighs and gives in, against his better judgment. He looks up, and glares at Sherlock over the top of his laptop.

Sherlock's sprawled on the sofa, half in and half out of his dressing gown. It's as if even getting that on straight had been too much trouble this morning. John's not quite sure what emotion he's going for over there, expression somewhere between irritation and wounded abandonment. The air of suffering is a little overdone though. John's seen how good he is when he actually _has_ to act. So he's assuming it's just laziness.

"You realise, of course, that I'm not some sort of amusing performing dog, who does tricks to entertain you," John tells him.

Sherlock continues to stare, in a way that seems to be hoping John will be entertaining anyway.

"I'm not," John adds, voice just a little more fierce than before. Because this is a point he's going to be strict on. He's not here for Sherlock's amusement. No matter what Sherlock seems to think. He doesn't exist to pander to his whims.

"What are you doing?" Sherlock asks, though his tone already suggests that whatever it is, it can't possibly be interesting enough to distract him away from Sherlock's terrible boredom. Sherlock's own personal idea of what's important will forever remain tragically skewed from everyone else’s.

"I'm updating my blog." John can't help but wonder whether giving Sherlock more information is ever a good thing, when he's so very good at using it against you. The fact that he can't seem to help it somehow makes it even more irritating.

There's silence for long enough that John swivels round in his chair.

Sherlock's fingers are white, where they're curled round the leather of the sofa cushions.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock rolls his head towards him, eyes fixing on his face. He inhales, sharply.

"What is it?" John asks, because he knows Sherlock's 'I've just thought of something vitally important' face, and this isn't it. This is something he's never seen before. Sherlock's off the couch and across the room without answering him, then on his knees by the table, shifting through the post. He tosses envelopes violently aside, until he comes to one written in tiny, cramped handwriting. He tears it almost in two getting it open, reads through it, then reads through it again.

He swears, once, twice and then crumples the paper at one edge. Then Sherlock's straightening, tugging his dressing gown off with an impatience that's close to violence.

"Get dressed."

"What - what's going on? Where are we going?"

"Scotland."

"Scotland? Sherlock, for God's sake. I have to work today."

"No, you're coming with me, and there's absolutely nothing more important than that!" Sherlock catches him under the armpit and makes a bloody good attempt at hauling him to his feet. Only the fact that the table is in the way turns it into an awkward stumble backwards.

John's not sure whether to bring a halt to Sherlock's frenzied enthusiasm, or to just go with it. But then, that's something of a constant now. An eternal conundrum. Always wondering how far to let Sherlock push.

"Why on earth are we going to Scotland?"

Sherlock claps his hands down on John's shoulders. "We're going to save the world, John."

John doesn't believe him for a minute.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [In The Land Of The Blind (Sherlock BBC) - Art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/462661) by [cybel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cybel/pseuds/cybel)
  * [Podfic: In The Land Of The Blind (entanglednow)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1352383) by [Cellar_Door](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cellar_Door/pseuds/Cellar_Door)




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